marketing

Your company’s website is a key component to a successful online marketing strategy. Without a properly designed website, your ability to attract and interest online customers is pretty much dead in the water. Since website design has become such an exacting science, it is an aspect of modern business which you should never take lightly.

If you get this part of your online marketing strategy wrong, the lost revenue you generate will speak for itself. This means it is important to know what it takes to get your website to properly work for your business. The following are four ways which outlines how your website design influences your marketing efforts.

Catching a Potential Customer’s Eye

When you put up a website for your business, it is critical to understand that you have seconds to grab your customer’s attention. If your website does not grab them in … Read More

Creating a clever, innovative and appealing campaign can be considered quite a challenge nowadays. Some would say that it is downright impossible to make something that hasn’t already been seen. That is why today’s biggest brands are trying a new approach when it comes to marketing their campaigns. The best part? It is a complete hit! Shipping containers are not used only for shipping anymore. Here are the 3 main reasons why these brands have decided to use this technique for promoting their business campaigns.

They Are Different

Certainly the first reason why they opted for shipping containers is the fact that they are something different, something that hasn’t been used throughout the years and something that is new and easy to spot. It is in peoples psychology to be attracted to anything that isn’t standard and usual to them .That … Read More

When we think of social media, the first thought that comes to mind is usually not LinkedIn. On its home page, LinkedIn touts itself as “the world’s largest professional network.” Most think of LinkedIn as a site just for professionals and those seeking jobs as professionals. If you’re bypassing this social media site because you’re thinking these things, you may need to think again. LinkedIn has some new tools that can go a long way in helping grow your business.

You start like everyone else, with a basic listing. A typical example would be the LinkedIn listing for Start Elevator, Inc.. This construction company, located in the Bronx in New York, has itself listed as a company with its own LinkedIn address. That’s the start; where do we go from here?

LinkedIn can be a powerful cornerstone in your business’s social media presence. There are some … Read More

With cloud computing being adopted by more and more industries as a way to store and access information, 2014 is being predicted as the year of the cloud. The consequences of this new innovation have the potential to change the gentle acceptance of cloud computing taking place now into a shockwave that will affect the IT landscape as well as business computing for years to come.

Personal Cloud Computing

Google — with its Chromebook, Android OS and Google Play store (where thousands of apps are free) — has already committed to personal cloud computing. All its hardware entries are cloud-centric and none use the typical hard drive configuration. Microsoft and Apple are also gearing up for the cloud revolution, with Windows 8 and Apple OS X (Mountain Lion) having woven the cloud into the next generation of desktop and laptop computers.

As technology opens up new means of solving IT and communication challenges, marketing opportunities simultaneously emerge. Forrester Research recently reported that 87 percent of online retailers plan on optimizing their mobile email communications with customers this year, while 70 percent intend to optimize their paid search campaigns for smartphones and tablets. So what else do companies stand to gain, and how could one implement these tactics into a professional setting?

Benefits of Increased Collaboration

The most obvious benefits of combining marketing and IT include improving target market accuracy and increasing marketing efficiency. Increasing one’s mobile presence can be an excellent way to attract a generation that’s attached to smartphones, especially when a company’s target audience is a young crowd. More exposure leads to more data collection, which results in more efficient marketing through data-driven content production. Putting two different departments in the same room is a breeding ground for innovation, with each … Read More

Hospital IT concerns are carefully balanced on a scale of cost savings and patient responsibility. Often, these are opposing needs. The best in medical tech isn’t the cheapest. It’s a sad reality that much of what’s best for patients isn’t what’s best for keeping hospital doors open. And so, doctors and administrators have to weigh priorities and make tough decisions to balance budgets.

But occasionally something comes along that’s both cost-effective and great for patients. In today’s tech environment, that’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). This technology runs a desktop environment through any computer, tablet or smartphone with access to it.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is BYOD’s more responsible older sister. Instead of weighing hospital employee devices down with unnecessary apps and slow-moving programs, VDIs give employees a way to access information without having any native programs on their devices.

It’s undeniable that cloud computing is becoming the IT way of the future for various industries. The easy accessibility of data makes a cloud strategy advantageous to many companies, and since cloud services are kept up-to-date by the provider, switching from location-based operations to cloud-based applications gives businesses the benefit of always working from the newest software.

Cloud technology has its share of growing pains, though, and when these pains occur, they generally pass from the host to the customers relying on the cloud services. For many small business owners, concerns about cloud hosting don’t supersede the benefits of doing business in the cloud. For every concern, there’s an advantage that makes it worth relying on cloud services. Here we’ll address some of the main concerns surrounding public cloud strategies and clarify the advantages they provide.

If you’ve never had to endure the aggravation and inconvenience of dealing with an unsavory Web host, I — and many others — envy you. It happens subtly, at first, though it might seem to spring forth suddenly. There are always warning signs. A minor, low importance support ticket takes a few weeks to close. Perhaps you’d forgotten about it entirely. Your site goes down a few times in one week, but it happens early in the morning, so you figure it’s not a big deal. Then it goes down during peak hours and you can’t reach anyone on the phone. Maybe you’ve gone over your allotted bandwidth with nary a message of warning or offer to upgrade. Maybe the server itself crashed and the host is “working on it.”

It’s easy to overlook a few hiccups, but if you’re with a less-than-scrupulous Web host they’ll progress beyond the occasional annoyance. By the time … Read More

The goal of branding is to make a great impression on consumers and develop a trusted connection with them. This entails of a variety of tasks, including developing taglines, logo designs, and an overall style, but it also includes a company’s website address. A URL should be memorable, succinct, and descriptive, as it plays a huge part in drawing customers to a website. Here we’ll examine how to create the best URL for your business and the concerns to bear in mind.

A Distinct Domain Name

When people want to learn about your business or organization, your website is what they’ll turn to. They’ll expect to find information about your products and services, but also to get a sense about the personality and style behind your company. Your URL choice may be obvious: Just add a dot-com behind your company name, but you may find that it’s not that simple. You’ll need to choose … Read More

So your company’s social media accounts just aren’t cutting it anymore? As easy as it might be to maintain an online presence through free mediums such as LinkedIn and Facebook, customers today expect you to go beyond these basic platforms. But starting a website from scratch is intimidating, so it’s no surprise that small businesses put these plans off as long as possible. Here are some tips for getting started.

Choose a Domain and Web Host First

You don’t want to create the full design for your website only to find your domain isn’t available and your web host doesn’t support the amount of space you’ll need. Before you decide on a domain name, you’ll want to take search engine optimization (SEO) into account so that you can take advantage of commonly searched terms and connect with the largest amount of users. For example, if your business sells environmentally-friendly products out of Houston, your domain should … Read More

Online marketing has changed significantly over the past few years, yet email spam is still running rampant. In spite of hating email spam, many marketers are still guilty of relying on it. Spamming your contacts isn’t an effective way to reach them. Why would your lead click on an email you would delete if it came in your inbox? To create a successful email marketing campaign, avoid these common mistakes.

The Explainabrag

Your email needs to convey something of value. The explainabrag goes on for paragraph after paragraph explaining what’s great about your company. “Have you heard about our company? You should use us! We’re awesome! Our customers are happy, see here’s one now! You should be impressed! Here’s why everyone loves us!”

If this is all you’re saying in your email, the reader is going to delete your email faster than Walter from The Big Lebowski loses his temper. Your prospects don’t care … Read More

Marketing has grown since the 1960s; the Internet has constructed a new wing — with rooms galore — on the mansion of effective marketing. However, it’s foolish for a business to engage in marketing efforts they can’t track. If you can’t see if something works — or if it’s more efficient than another method — how do you know if you’re wasting your time and money? If you can’t measure your ROI, switch up your methods. Marketing isn’t just about attracting people to your products; it’s about using your budget efficiently so you can have the biggest impact possible. Collect, organize and use the data you collect to benefit your marketing campaigns. Email marketing campaigns give you an unprecedented ability to sculpt, direct and evaluate marketing materials for a finely segmented audience; Pay-per-click advertising, on the other hand, lets you target a general audience — people searching for the type of product or service you … Read More

It’s no revelation that the cloud has changed the way businesses operate. Odds are you’ve heard the term “cloud computing” thrown around in blog posts, advertisements and even TV shows. Yet, when you sit around your office selling your small staff on this new technological advancement, definitions start to get a little cloudy. As more companies deliver their services over the Internet, it makes sense for small businesses to ditch their traditional business processes for more Web-oriented services.

Navigating the world of cloud services

Cloud services fall into one of three categories: infrastructure as a service, platform as a service or software as a service. The big idea, and real draw of cloud services is access. In the cloud you’re not paying for ownership, but rather the ability to access and use powerful computing services on a subscription basis. Here just a few of the most common types of cloud services that are changing the way … Read More